Oil spill could be permanently plugged

By macleans.ca - Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM - 0 Comments

BP is claiming success after a sealing cap has managed to block oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April 20, with tests showing no damage to the undersea well.  The experimental cap could remain in place until the well is permanently plugged by cement and mud, says Doug Suttles, the company’s chief operating officer.  The U.S. government estimates the well pumped up to 9.5 million litres of oil into the sea every day since the initial explosion.

CTV News

Sarko’s summer soap opera

By Kate Lunau - Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

DANNY GYS/REDUX/ HORST OSSINGER/KEYSTONE PRESS

A family feud over the fortune of France’s richest woman—Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire, who’s worth a reported $20 billion—has touched off a scandal about alleged illegal campaign contributions that threatens to drag down Nicolas Sarkozy himself. For the French president, who’s pushing austerity measures to shore up the country’s economy in the face of the global economic crisis, it couldn’t have come at a worse time: earlier this month, his approval rating fell to 33 per cent, making him the most unpopular French leader since the pollsters started keeping track 30 years ago.

When he was elected in 2007, Sarkozy was something of a novelty in France, says Edward Berenson, director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University. “He wasn’t squeamish about money and success,” he says. While it intrigued voters at first, “two years into the economic crisis, that perception is costing him.” And with l’affaire Bettencourt splashed across the French dailies—rife with tales of cash-stuffed envelopes and lavish gifts—the recession-rattled public’s patience for Sarkozy is wearing thin.

Continue…

Pre-election peaks and doldrums, or, a lesson for Alf (UPDATED)

By Paul Wells - Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 4:56 PM - 0 Comments

I’m mostly going to leave readers to draw their own conclusions about the latest epistle from Liberal Party president Alf Apps. His analyses of the press gallery and of his party’s leader constitute fair comment. But I admit I’m flummoxed that a Liberal official is still poring over polling data from between elections to seek comfort.

Here’s a secret about elections: they don’t happen between elections. Elections are almost always simultaneous with elections. So one thing people who are interested in politics — journalists, presidents of major political parties — should do is pay some attention to the way voter behaviour on election days compares to voters’ predictions of  their own behaviour when elections are distant and hypothetical.

To help, I’ve swiped a chart from the estimable Nanos Research, which shows party-support trends since 2002. (Pause.) Ok, for whatever reason, WordPress doesn’t want to insert the chart in this post, so just click on this link to load your own .pdf: Nanos trend

Now, just about the most reliable trend in the chart is that every time there’s been an election, Conservative support has jumped smartly upward while Liberal support declined as sharply. You see it happen in 2004, when what looked like a Liberal rout of the Conservatives turned into the loss of the Liberal majority. (Memory plays tricks. It was not at all clear, on the day Paul Martin dropped the writ, that his majority was even in danger, and when Jean Lapierre said several days into the campaign that he expected a Liberal minority, it was covered as a big gaffe.) You see it again in 2006, and you see it most spectacularly in 2008. But you also see it in the autumn of 2009, after Michael Ignatieff announced that Stephen Harper’s “time was up” and we seemed to be headed for an election.

As a rule of thumb, the Harper-era Conservative writ-period bounce seems to be about five percentage points or a little more. The Liberal writ-period decline is comparable. Which means if the two parties are tied in voter support on the day a campaign begins, the Liberals should, as a rule of thumb, expect to be 10 points behind when people actually vote. Right now the two parties are not tied.

Of course history isn’t fate. There will be elections where the Conservatives don’t benefit from a 10-point swing during the writ period. But if you’re writing an 18-page memo about polls sometime soon you might want to mention this very robust trend.

UPDATE, Sunday: Many commentators say three data points (2004, 2006, 2008) is a flimsy data set. Quite true. Here are two more. The 13th link from the bottom (“Update on the Federal Political Landscape”) from a list of old Ekos polls shows you an Ekos/Torstar poll from 2002; like Nanos, Ekos gives a longish time series of its party-preference polling. What kind of jumps out is that the two lowest troughs in Liberal support since the late 1990s are the two moments when Canadians actually voted: the 1997 election and the 2000 election. If anything, the combined swing illustrated by Liberal declines and PC/Reform/Alliance gains is more than 10 points.

So that’s five federal elections in a row, 1997 to 2008, where the trend is for the Liberals to bottom out and the (assorted conservative, then Conservative Party) opponent to have better results than recent polls had indicated. Note that this isn’t about “governments” dipping while “oppositions” gain: conservative parties posted writ-period gains against the Liberals without regard to which of them was in power.

I’m told this pattern goes back decades. I’m looking for confirmation.

10 injured on Calgary Stampede ride

By macleans.ca - Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 4:25 PM - 0 Comments

10 Stampede-goers are injured after the mechanical arm on a ride called the Scorpion flew off, flinging the circling pods with passengers to the ground. EMS spokesman Stuart Brideaux said six people between the ages of 13 and 19 were taken to area hospitals, according to the Canadian Press, although none of the injuries are life-threatening.

Chronicle Herald

The libertarian cavalry

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 1:21 PM - 0 Comments

The economists, statisticians, city planners, social groups and religious leaders have had (and continue to have) their say and so now the folks at the Western Standard have helpfully compiled census opinions from their libertarian orbit, including takes from PM Jaworski, Walter Block, JJ McCullough, Terrence Watson, Martin Masse, Hugh MacIntyre and Paul McKeever.

Here’s another opinion sent directly to me from Matt Bufton, whose opinions, whatever his professional associations, are his and his alone. Continue…

Let us see whose fingers point best

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 9:43 AM - 0 Comments

The Minister pointed to Statistics Canada, only Statistics Canada wouldn’t, or couldn’t, explain anything. And so now anonymous sources tell Canadian Press a slightly different version of events.

Embattled Industry Minister Tony Clement says the decision to replace next year’s mandatory long census with a voluntary questionnaire stemmed from recommendations made to him by Statistics Canada. But multiple sources are telling The Canadian Press that is not exactly what happened. The sources say Statistics Canada made no recommendations and only came up with policy options because they were asked to do so by Clement.

Music: Call it anything

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 11:26 PM - 0 Comments

For no real reason at all, I posted the link to this video in one of the comment boards today, and now I’ll write a bit about it.

This is part one of Miles Davis at the Isle of Wight festival in August, 1970. Apparently he played immediately after Tiny Tim. There are four videos in this Youtube set; I’ve posted the first above. The superb Miles Davis exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is screening this entire video in a loop. One of the smartest choices of the MMFA exhibit is to offer no judgment about Miles’s transition from acoustic to electric instruments and swing to rock beats: it’s just something that happened at the end of the ’60s, and you get to decide for yourself whether it was brilliant or wicked. My own theory is that it had a lot to do with insecurity brought on by his brief marriage to the much younger Betty Mabry, and I think there’s more to like than to regret about his music from this period. (From about 1985, it was harder to be genuinely impressed by the very proficient Scritti Politti cover band he had assembled.)

A few thoughts:

• Keith Jarrett was new to the band. Imagine how Chick Corea, the other keyboardist, felt. Terrified and intrigued in equal measure, I’m betting. Note how Davis stations the two young keyboardists so they face each other, putting each in the other’s face. Corea (curly hair, granny glasses) responds warily. Jarrett (afro, sunglasses) does his ecstatic abandon thing.

• That’s a cuica the percussionist, Airto Moreira, uses through Part 1, a small Brazilian hand drum he holds with one hand and reaches inside to rub with the other, producing a high-pitched, weirdly human sound. I love those things.

• There’s about 600,000 people out there, but Jack DeJohnette actually doesn’t hit his drums very loud for most of the show. The young musicians Davis hired, especially in the early phase of his “rock” period, were jazz musicians who’d have been just as happy to play acoustic instruments at jazz-club volume. Jarrett hated electronic instruments, but Davis made their use a condition of the job offer so Jarrett swallowed his pride and dove in.

• Doesn’t Miles look great? Especially after he takes the leather jacket off.

We've been wrong about everything

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 10:52 PM - 0 Comments

The president of the Liberal Party of Canada has sent out a memo explaining that the Parliamentary press gallery and its outport operations in Toronto and Montreal don’t have a clue what’s going on. You have to admit the argument has a certain surface plausibility.

Anyway, here’s an account of Alf Apps’s memo, with the memo itself embedded in full. Frankly I found the memo more useful than the accompanying story, but no matter. Good on Public Eye for getting this memo and posting it. I have analysis of my own, but I’ll refrain from contaminating your consideration of Apps’s arguments.

Open discussion in the comments — ideally more polite, each commenter toward the others, than some of our comment-board discussion has been lately.

No comment

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 6:35 PM - 0 Comments

Late yesterday afternoon, as mentioned, the following was filed with StatsCan’s media office.

Minister Clement said today that Statistics Canada was consulted and advised his department as part of the decision to change the census for 2011. As such, can someone at StatsCan speak to the changes and address some of the concerns that have been expressed about the collection of data?

Twenty-four hours later, the entirety of the response from StatsCan is as follows.

Statistics Canada is not in a position to answer questions on the advice it gave the Minister in relation to recent statements the Minister has made.

A follow-up has been sent—essentially restating the original question—but has so far no reply has been received. In its original story on this matter, published two weeks ago, the Canadian Press quoted both the director general of the census and an unnamed StatsCan official.

Speaking of freedom from state tyranny

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 5:13 PM - 0 Comments

While the haze still lingers, that weekend in Toronto now has a soundtrack, courtesy of Broken Social Scene and some enterprising videographer.

This video was made as a response to the G20 Summit in Toronto June, 2010. The rest speaks for itself. It was sent to us by a lover of our music who wants to remain anonymous. We are very proud to share this mash-up with you.

Video after the jump. Continue…

One thing about new fighter jets—fighter pilots love them

By John Geddes - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 4:27 PM - 0 Comments

The government’s elaborately orchestrated announcement today of its decision to spend $9 billion, plus undisclosed billions more in maintenance costs, to buy 65 fighter jets was heavy on touting the purchase as a boon to Canadian aerospace companies.

Interesting as the matter of defence industry jobs and profits might be, however, the more important question is surely why the Canadian Forces needs Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighters. After all, they’re not the sort hardware that’s obviously useful for the sorts of jobs—fighting insurgents in Kandahar’s orchards, say, or delivering emergency relief to Haiti—that seem most pressing in the post-cold war era.

So when Defence Minister Peter MacKay was pointedly asked in the news conference this morning for “specific examples of the uses of these aircraft,” I listened carefully for what I thought might be the key answer of the day.

Continue…

The monstrous thing

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 4:11 PM - 0 Comments

In case you dare gaze upon it yourself, here is a copy of the 2006 long-form census. And here is the guide StatsCan provides for the long-form census.

Here is the long-form that was used in 2001. And here are StatsCan’s explanations for asking those questions.

Forget Old Spice Guy; Meet Price Is Right Guy

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 3:29 PM - 0 Comments

Everybody’s been linking to this, but somehow this seems like perfect Friday reading to me: Chris Jones’s article on Terry Kniess, the guy who guessed the exact Actual Retail Price in the Price is Right Showcase Showdown. In his 2008 appearance on the show, Kniess managed two “perfect bids,” first on the item that gets you out of Contestant’s Row (these perfect bids, while rare, do happen), and then on the bad lesser-priced Showcase, winning both Showcases. No one had ever guessed the exact price of a Showcase before, and coming right after that other bid, it seemed suspicious — particularly because, in that particular episode, everybody seemed to be winning. Because the show had just fired its longtime producer, Roger Dobkowitz, there were fears that he might have given away “the show’s secrets” to get revenge, and there was that former contestant in the audience, Ted Slauson, an expert on the game who specialized in being helpful to contestants he liked. Anyway, read the whole thing.

Not really knowing exactly what caused the perfect bids (except the obvious, that if it had been a carefully thought-out plan he’d have guessed five dollars more or less, rather than exactly on the nose), the more interesting part to me is how the guy who lost the most out of this seems to have been Drew Carey: because he was genuinely worried that the fix might be in, he didn’t react with the enthusiasm the audience expected when this guy did the impossible. Bob Barker says he’d have celebrated the victory and, I guess, worried about it later. But he’d have had the advantage of absolute security, the knowledge that people wouldn’t blame him if someone turned out to be a cheater. Carey and producer Kathy Greco, both being relatively new to the job, were not as secure; if this blew up into a major scandal they’d both be doomed. So you can see why Carey couldn’t feign enthusiasm, but the result was to anger a large portion of the viewing audience, which — absent a scandal — wondered why this guy was such a wet blanket.

[vodpod id=Video.1237012&w=640&h=385&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Also find it interesting that Kniess and his wife sold many of the prizes to pay the taxes on the winnings. Not that I feel bad for anyone who wins big, but it reminds me of a guy who won a “home showcase” (I think this was in the ’80s). The contest was for people at home to submit their bids on a package of prizes; Barker spoke to the winner, who’d guessed incredibly close (but not exactly right), on the phone. The winner was extremely unenthusiastic, bored even. When Barker called him out on it, the guy replied: “Well, I’m a little worried about taxes, Bob.”

That census debate, late Victorian edition

By Colby Cosh - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 3:28 PM - 0 Comments

The objections to the census on Biblical grounds are now a thing of the past; the objections on the ground that the census is inquisitorial have also, there is good reason to believe, gradually lost their force… it is now agreed among all civilized nations that a census is a useful and desirable thing.

Thus spake the scientist and administrator G.B. Longstaff (1849-1921) in an address to the Royal Statistical Society on June 25, 1889. Longstaff’s discussion of the imperial census activity scheduled for 1891 sheds fascinating light on today’s Canadian debate: I’m not sure anyone has yet pointed out, as Longstaff did that night, that New France, Acadia, and Newfoundland are where the first censuses of any kind since antiquity were taken, and that only then did the idea return to find acceptance in Old Europe.

It took about fifty years, mind you, to convince the restless, suspicious people of Britain to accept even the most rudimentary nose-count; among the new factors which predisposed them to accept it was Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). (As time goes by I become more convinced that Malthus, for his approach rather than his conclusions, belongs to the rank of Hume and Adam Smith in the history of ideas, and may even approach that of Newton and Darwin.) Readers will find matter of particular interest in Part II of the body of Longstaff’s address, wherein he discusses what questions it is appropriate to ask in a census. He commences, perhaps revealing his training as a lepidopterist, with a taxonomic observation:

Statisticians may be divided into two classes, (a) those who clamour for much information on many subjects, even though such information be confessedly very imperfect; and (b) those who, being of a more sceptical turn of mind, prefer to ask for very little, and to concentrate their efforts on getting that little with the greatest attainable accuracy.

The American president

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 3:02 PM - 0 Comments

Has it really been two years since Barack Obama visited Berlin? Indeed. At the time, I wrote an odd little rant here in which I complained that the Democratic candidate’s itinerary — London, Paris, Berlin — was a bit too close to the route mapped by the Griswold family in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. Problem: twenty-three years had elapsed, during which the Berlin Wall had fallen, Maastricht, Schengen and enlargement had transformed the European Union, and the action was in a lot of places besides the capitals Obama had heard about in high school. (I wound up suggesting an itinerary that would include Stockholm, Prague and Brussels.)

It was an easy argument to dismiss. Campaigning isn’t governing. The fickle U.S. electorate needs familiar backdrops for its photo ops. Europe doesn’t matter to America. He won, eventually, didn’t he? All true.

And yet here today, and bouncing around the European newspapers, is José Manuel Barroso complaining that the Europe-US relationship is “not living up to its potential.” Continue…

Mass arrests in Asia over World Cup gambling

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 2:29 PM - 0 Comments

Interpol have arrested 5,000 people and seized US$10 million in raids of nearly 800 illegal gambling dens across Asia whose combined business was worth over US$155 million. The gambling crackdown, called Operation Soga III, ran from June 11 to July 11 with arrests made in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Interpol’s chief of police Jean-Michel Louboutin says the Soga operations—the first and second editions took place during the two previous World Cup tournaments— have resulted in nearly 7,000 arrests and seizures of more than $26 million. It’s not clear whether or not the results matches were affected by the gambling.

BBC News

Some spoons are more equal than others

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 2:19 PM - 0 Comments

Medical experts are warning parents not to use household spoons when they giving medication to their children. “The variations between the domestic spoon sizes was considerable and in some case bore no relation to the proper calibrated spoons included in many commercially available children’s medicines,” said Professor Matthew Falagas. The study looked at 71 teaspoons and 49 tablespoons collected from 25 households in Attica, Greece and found the capacity of the teaspoons ranged from 2.5ml to 7.3ml. The discrepancy could mean some children received 192 per cent more medication than was recommended and some received far less than the prescribed dose. The solution? Use a medicine syringe.

Science Daily

Frustration for U.S. troops in Kandahar

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 2:14 PM - 0 Comments

About two weeks ago Canada turned over responsibility for Zhari, a lush farming district west of Kandahar city, to the U.S. army. It’s part of the gradual curtailing of Canada’s role in Kandahar before next year’s planned full Canadian military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Zhari is seen as the cradle of the Taliban insurgency. Now, early American news accounts of the challenge facing Western forces there are emerging. This Washington Post story reports on U.S. efforts to persuade local leaders to back the weak Afghan government, and not the Taliban. The challenge, as the Canadians learned, is that the Taliban has a “stranglehold on the population” and the locals are angry about the foreign military presence. Frustration comes through in the story of how a tribal council tentatively suggested sending locals on U.S. patrols, then dropped the promising idea. “When it came time to decide,” says a U.S. commander, “everyone stepped back.”

Washington Post

Census, here and there

By Andrew Potter - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 2:09 PM - 0 Comments

It’s no small irony that just at a moment in history when we’ve collectively decided to put every last fricking detail of our lives on some social networking site or another, for no reason other than raw narcissism, the government has decided that a survey that any given household will be asked to fill out on average four times a century is just too intrusive, notwithstanding its paramount value to setting public policy of all sorts.

There’s been all sorts of speculation as to just what Harper and his statistically illiterate sockpuppet Tony Clement are up to, but it’s probably not a coincidence that the UK has also decided to scrap its ten-year census (on grounds ranging from “too intrusive” to “too expensive”), and the just-completed census in the US was marked by widespread opposition from both the left and the right, in a counting that saw 379 census workers assaulted. From the right, Ron Paul went on some weirdo tinfoil hat rant against the counting of persons by the federal government, until other, more planet-Earth bound Republicans pointed out that if a bunch of right-wingers abstain from the census, then it will affect seat distribution and lead to a loss of Republican seats in Congress.

But maybe they needn’t have worried. After all, joining the paranoiacs on the right  were a whole bunch of hipsters who were, apparently, too cool to be counted: Williamsburg had a census return rate of only 30 percent. As Gawker suggested:

What if, instead of sending them to everyone’s houses, the forms were available only in select independent record stores… in Norway? And they cost $100 dollars? Guaranteed we’d start reading Thursday Style pieces about the coke-filled underground census-filling-out parties sweeping the more fauxhemian parts of our city. Dude, we’re gonna fill out some cennies Saturday.

But in Canada, that would only work on Queen St. West and maybe parts of the Plateau in Montreal. In the absence of any committed effort by the democracies of the West to count their populations, here’s an idea: Why don’t they just buy Facebook?

Tony Clement needs you (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

Postmedia’s Shannon Proudfoot finds a taker: a senior economist with the Fraser Institute willing to support the government’s changes to the census.

“I certainly understand that social scientists, and I’m one of them, like to play with data, they like to analyze social trends and analyze trends, but the reality here is there really is no good basis for collecting this information,” he said. “It’s a cheap way for academics and social scientists to get information that I believe should be acquired using voluntary means.”

It perhaps unfortunate for Mr. Clement’s cause that this same economist co-authored a report on federal stimulus in March that the Finance Minister dismissed as “shabby.”

Protests continue over G20 drama, plus what Belinda Stronach did before the G20

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:56 PM - 0 Comments

Large protests over civil rights violations at the G20 continue to happen in Toronto. Last week,  people “took back” the intersection of Queen and Spadina where riot police famously held people for hours in the rain. On July 17^th, Canadians Advocating Political Participation (CAPP) have rallies planned in three cities – Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver.

Continue…

Tony Clement needs you (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:55 PM - 0 Comments

Still no responses to my call for economists, statisticians, city planners and the like to step forward with a defence of the Industry Minister’s census changes. So let’s open it up a bit: is anyone from a conservative-minded organization or advocacy group willing to step forward and defend this decision as sound and just?* I welcome any and all submissions (aaron.wherry@macleans.rogers.com).

In the meantime, add former clerk of the Privy Council Alex Himelfarb, pollster Frank Graves, the chief economist of the Greater Halifax Partnership, the French Language Services Commissioner of Ontario, the executive director of the Société franco-manitobaine, the editorial board of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and provincial officials in Quebec, BC and PEI to the listen of complainants.

*This post originally, and innocently, named a few potential examples of organizations that might comment. One—the Institute for Liberal Studies, which is actually directed by a guy I knew in high school—has noted that its educational and charitable status actually precludes it from commenting. Apologies for any confusion that could have resulted from my mentioning them here. I’ve also deleted all names so as not to otherwise make it seem like any sort of specific challenge. As you were.

Canadian believed killed in Iraqi hotel fire

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

A Canadian citizen is believed to be among the 29 people killed in an electrical fire that destroyed a five-storey hotel in northern Iraq. The chief of police in Sulaimaniyah said the fire started late Thursday, adding four women and four children were among the dead. Foreign affairs spokesman Alain Cacchione said the department had “received preliminary reports indicating that a Canadian citizen may be affected,” but added that no further information was available and said the department was monitoring the situation. In addition to the Canadian fatality, victims include people from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Venezuela and China, with some working for foreign oil companies. Sulaimaniyah, located 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, is the commercial capital of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region and the country’s second-largest city.

Toronto Star

Canada ponders a penniless future

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

Canada could face a penniless future as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is openly musing about the end of the one-cent coin. Documents obtained by the Toronto Star reveal officials from his department have been in discussions with the Royal Canadian Mint to consider a penny-free society, and have talked to officials in Australia and New Zealand—both countries have axed the penny—about the logistics of cash purchases. One briefing note from the Mint says Ottawa could withdraw the penny from circulation but still allow them to be accepted for commerce. Or it could end production of the penny and “demonetize” the coin on a specific date, meaning they could no longer be used to pay for purchases. Thirty billion pennies have been produced in Canada since 1908, many have which have ended up in Canadians’ bedroom drawers, piggy banks and kitchen jars. But Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Pierre Duguay told a Senate committee in May the coin has lost 95 per cent of its purchasing power. It also costs 1.5 cents to produce and distribute each coin, meaning production is costing taxpayers. The final decision to remove any coin denomination rests with the government, and a spokesperson finance department said the fate of the penny is being reviewed by the Senate finance committee.

Toronto Star